2 New Books About Israel--1 Worthwhile

The Siege: The Saga Of Israel And Zionism By Conor Cruise O`brien

Simon & Schuster, 798 Pages, $24.95

1949: The First Israelis By Tom Segev

Free Press, 400 Pages, $19.95

March 09, 1986|By Reviewed by Milton Viorst. A political writer who specializes in Middle Eastern affairs

The reaction any new book on the Arab-Israeli conflict is likely to encounter these days is, ``Oh no, not another one!`` I know, because I`m writing ``another`` one, which is meant as warning that I am not only reviewer but fellow laborer. As such, I would argue that, to justify publication in this crowded field, a new book must offer either significant new research or a newly illuminating vision of events. Tom Segev`s ``1949: The First Israelis`` meets the first standard. Unfortunately, Conor Cruise O`Brien`s ``The Siege:

The Saga of Israel and Zionism`` meets neither.

Segev, an Israeli journalist, has produced from the archives a demythologizing account of the period of Israel`s war of independence. Israelis have not enjoyed the book. It reduces the major figures of a heroic age to modest dimensions. It tells of blunders in the settling of refugees from the diaspora, of venality in the sequestration of Arab property. It reveals that Israeli soldiers engaged in rape and plunder. It contains evidence of Israel`s rejection of singularly one-sided Arab terms for peace--a departure from the conventional view that the Arabs have refused to talk peace at all.

Segev gives us a book about Jews as fallable human beings. He tells a story of how a huge military parade in Tel Aviv to commemorate Israel`s first anniversary of independence had to be canceled because the parade route could not be cleared of the hundreds of thousands of Israelis who were celebrating in the streets. The next day, the editor of Ma`ariv wrote sweetly that in Hitler`s Germany such a thing could not have happened ``and it may be that it was supposed to be the essence of the day that the people and not the army filled the road. . . . It failed because, while we wanted a military parade with all our hearts, we are nevertheless Jews.``

Segev presents Israelis lovingly but with their flaws undisguised. The Israel he offers us is no less a land of heroes for being a land of knaves; a land where sacrifice is the order of the day but so is corruption; it is a place that for some is the embodiment of a grand vision and for others an arena for the banal pursuit of wealth and power. Obviously, it will be a troubling book to those who would idealize Zionism. But it is a book we need. O`Brien`s book is not, though I suspect it will be the more popular of the two. O`Brien is an Irishman, which scarcely disqualifies him from writing about Jews, but he comes to the subject as a researcher, with no discernible

``feel.`` He opens with a desultory history of the Zionist movement, and proceeds with a derivative account of the struggle to found the state. Despite his own peripheral involvement in some of the early United Nations negotiations, he offers no ``insider`` stories, much less the special insight that might be expected from a longtime diplomat. By the time he reaches the contemporary era, he seems tired of the work, and delivers his material to us virtually undigested.

So why is his book likely to be the more popular? First, because O`Brien is an international figure, having been an ambassador and parliamentarian, and he has a reputation for fairness. Indeed, the book is honest, conveying genuine sympathy for both sides, and O`Brien did not engage in skewing of evidence to reach his conclusion.

The conclusion is that there is no hope for a solution to the Middle East conflict. From it, the obvious lesson is that Israel must maintain military dominance over its neighbors, forget peace negotiations and stay armed to the teeth forevermore. This position is fashionable in America, with huge support among Jews and non-Jews alike.

But, in fairness, O`Brien`s aim is not to impede peace. In a chapter titled ``Holocaust in Mind`` he tells why he writes:

``In trying to understand what the Holocaust . . . means to the people of Israel, I have been thinking about the history of my own people, the Irish Roman Catholics. . . . (T)here is comparability, between the Jewish and Irish Catholic historical experience. Both are, though in greatly differing degrees, experiences of oppression and stigmatization . . .

``(T)here is another Irish parallel--between the Catholics of Northern Ireland and the Palestinian Arabs. A little over 350 years ago, the Catholic natives of large regions of Ulster were displaced from their homelands . . . by a population differing from them both in religion and political allegiance, and more advanced in techniques, education and social

organization. The natives remained in the area, mainly as tenants on the poorer land, and in unskilled employment . . . ``

O`Brien has found in the agonies of the Arab-Israeli conflict a catharsis for his own suffering as an Irish Catholic. He does not claim that the Irish precedent proves permanent war inevitable. But ``probable,`` he would say, and his perception of hopelessness brings him a joyless satisfaction. For others, however, his message of hopelessness is vindication of a contempt for the compromises that a peace settlement requires.

For my part, I am not prepared to swallow the Ulster model. Nor do I think human beings--Jews or Arabs--are quite the pawns of historical determinism that O`Brien suggests. That Jews and Arabs are foreordained to keep killing each other is a mindless notion. Worse, if widely enough accepted, the notion becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.